Comment by Riaz Haq on August 19, 2021 at 8:46pm

The Taliban Have Claimed Afghanistan’s Real Economic Prize (vast informal economy)

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/18/opinion/taliban-afghanistan-econ...

The state’s bankruptcy has tempted some Western donors into thinking that financial pressure — in the form of threats to withhold humanitarian and development funding — could be brought to bear on the new rulers of Afghanistan. Germany already warned it would cut off financial support to the country if the Taliban “introduce Shariah law.”

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One reason foreign donors inflate their own importance in Afghanistan is that they do not understand the informal economy, and the vast amounts of hidden money in the war zone. Trafficking in opium, hashish, methamphetamines and other narcotics is not the biggest kind of trade that happens off the books: The real money comes from the illegal movement of ordinary goods, like fuel and consumer imports. In size and sum, the informal economy dwarfs international aid.

For example, our study of the border province of Nimruz, published this month by the Overseas Development Institute, estimated that informal taxation — the collection of fees by armed personnel to allow safe passage of goods — raised about $235 million annually for the Taliban and pro-government figures. By contrast, the province received less than $20 million a year in foreign aid.

A southern province in the heartland of Taliban supporters, Nimruz is the sort of place that might serve as a basis for Taliban thinking about how the economy works. This summer, they set about taking it over. In June, they captured Ghorghory, the administrative center of Khashrud District, followed by the town of Delaram, on the main highway, in July. These two towns alone could be worth $18.6 million a year for the Taliban if they maintain the previous systems of informal taxation, including $5.4 million from the fuel trade and $13 million from transit goods.

A bigger prize was the customs house in Zaranj, a city bordering Iran and the first provincial capital to fall during the Taliban’s August offensive. Though the city officially provided the government with $43.2 million in annual duties — with an additional $50 million in direct taxes in 2020 — there was, we found, a significant amount of undeclared trade, particularly of fuel, taking the true total revenues from the border crossing to at least $176 million a year.


The Taliban’s advance forced a dilemma on neighboring countries: They could either continue to trade, giving the Taliban more power and legitimacy, or deny themselves trade revenues and accept the financial pain. Though they have sometimes opted for the latter, it’s unclear — as pressure mounts to officially recognize the Taliban government — how much longer that will last.

Take Iran, for example. We estimated that the Taliban earned $84 million last year by taxing Afghans who trade with Iran — and that was before the insurgents captured all three of Afghanistan’s major border crossings with Iran. Tehran, unwilling to legitimize the Taliban, halted all trade with Afghanistan in early August. But the economic imperative to reopen to commercial traffic is strong. More than $2 billion in trade passed through those crossings last year, according to official figures, and our research suggests that the actual numbers, once informal trade is included, could be twice as high. Early reports suggest the border crossings are open again, though trade remains slow and disrupted.

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But the windfalls from cross-border commerce — a single border crossing to Pakistan, captured in July, brings in tens of millions of dollars a year in illegal revenues — are making the Taliban, now ruling the Afghan state, into major players in South Asia’s regional trade. That means, crucially, that the usual methods by which recalcitrant regimes are subjected to international pressure — sanctions, isolation — are less applicable to today’s Afghanistan.

Comment by Riaz Haq on August 20, 2021 at 8:59am

Frosty U.S.-Pakistan Relations Complicate Efforts to Keep Terror At Bay in Taliban’s Afghanistan

Eroded relations with Pakistan threaten U.S. capacity to keep in check terror groups like al-Qaida and the Islamic State group that operate in the Taliban’s Afghanistan.


https://www.usnews.com/news/world-report/articles/2021-08-20/frosty...


And the need for American access to Afghanistan remains as urgent as ever. Despite 20 years of war, the U.S. faces persistent, if not growing threats from al-Qaida, the Taliban and new terrorist networks, such as the Islamic State group, along with a handful of other smaller organizations.

"Access to Pakistani airspace is the most operational advantageous approach for effective over-the-horizon counter-terrorism operations," says retired Army Gen. Joseph Votel, who has extensive experience operating in and around that airspace.

Votel was among the first Americans to cross through it in the weeks after Sept. 11 when he led the special operations forces that first parachuted onto Taliban strongholds in southern Afghanistan. He rose through a series of commands, including leading the shadowy Joint Special Operations Command (taking over a month after its operators carried out the bin Laden raid) before overseeing all special forces in the U.S. military and ultimately all American operations in the Middle East.


Aside from being most advantageous, Pakistani airspace is now the only reliable way for the U.S. to access Afghanistan. To the east lies Iran and to the north are the former Soviet states that had engaged in some degree of coordination with the U.S. in the early stages of the war in Afghanistan, up until Western relations with Russia collapsed following its occupation of parts of Ukraine in 2014. Russia has since seen to it that its former allies, notably Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, have refused helping America as it tries to maintain pressure on terrorist groups in the area.

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American national security officials have offered overt confidence in their ability to mitigate that threat, yet the situation on the ground has grown more complex, all the more magnified by the collapse of the government the U.S. hoped to leave behind.

Despite the challenges posed by Pakistan and its relationship with the Taliban, the military stands by its ability to target terrorists – even without U.S. support on the ground.

"We maintain robust over-the-horizon counter-terrorism capability in the region," Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Thursday when asked. "And we will still have the authority and capability to use that counter-terrorism capability should we need it."

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But each of those countries enjoys near access to American bases in the region to support those operations.

"Just getting to Afghanistan is an operation – without closer proximity," Votel says.

Pilots who have operated over Afghanistan describe to U.S. News at least a four-hour journey from the nearest bases in Qatar for sophisticated military aircraft to even reach the country, let alone begin the process of refueling to be able to carry out operations and then return.

And operations in Syria, Somalia and Yemen have also been successful due to some form of partner force on the ground, whether American special operations commandos or local troops that have agreed to work with the U.S. Aside from reports of pockets of resistance fighters in one corner of Afghanistan, the shocking collapse of the Afghan army appears to have left the U.S. without that on-the-ground support.

"Even with an effective over-the-horizon approach," Votel says, "we would still want good partners on the ground helping us."

And that, at least for now, does not appear certain, if at all possible.

Comment by Riaz Haq on August 20, 2021 at 10:59am

#Trump calls ex #Afghan President Ghani "total crook," says "he got away with murder". "I wanted [the Taliban] to get a deal done with the Afghan government," Trump continued. "Now, I never had a lot of confidence, frankly, in Ghani." #US #Taliban https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-calls-former-afghan-president...

Trump made his comments during a Tuesday night interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity. Hannity asked Trump about his dealings with Taliban leaders and the Afghan government as Trump prepared to withdraw U.S. military troops from the region.

First, Trump said that he negotiated with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar Akhund, the Taliban's co-founder. Trump said he told the Taliban leader that the U.S. troop withdrawal was a "conditions-based agreement." If the Taliban harmed any Americans or allies, Trump said, the U.S. would retaliate by bombing the leader's home village as well as other parts the country.

"I wanted [the Taliban] to get a deal done with the Afghan government," Trump continued. "Now, I never had a lot of confidence, frankly, in Ghani. I said that openly and plainly I thought he was a total crook."

Trump then said that Ghani "spent all his time wining and dining our senators." He added, "The senators were in his pocket. That was one of the problems that we had. But I never liked him... He got away with murder in many, many different ways."

Trump didn't explain in what ways Ghani "got away with murder."

Trump also said that he suspected that Ghani fled with cash when he secretly left Afghanistan last Sunday. Trump's suspicion was based on Ghani's "lifestyle", "his houses" and "where he lives," Trump said.

Trump's claim about Ghani escaping with money may have originated from Russia's embassy in Kabul. The embassy reported that Ghani and his entourage departed with "four cars were full of money," the Russian news agency RIA reported. The Russian government has since offered its "political support" to the country's new Taliban rulers, the Taliban said.

Ghani is currently hiding in an unknown location. He fled his country as the Taliban's Islamic extremist military forces overtook the capital city of Kabul. Ghani later said that he departed in order to avoid more violence and bloodshed by those who might've defended his rule.

However, Saad Mohseni, the owner of one of Afghanistan's most popular television stations, told The New York Times that Ghani will be remembered as a traitor by his countrymen.

Comment by Riaz Haq on August 20, 2021 at 9:42pm

#Pakistan currently hosts 1.438 million #Afghan refugees, the largest number in the world. #US with all its massive 24X7 cable coverage of the events in #Afghanistan hosts only 2,000 Afghan refugees.

https://twitter.com/haqsmusings/status/1428939681031344134?s=20

Comment by Riaz Haq on August 21, 2021 at 7:56am

A tale of two Talibans

https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/a-tale-of-two-talibans-45617


A UN report last year assessed that there were more than 6,000 Pakistani foreign fighters in Afghanistan, most belonging to TTP. These fighters not only fight with the Afghan Taliban but also stage cross-border attacks against Pakistan. According to the UN’s latest figures, there were more than 100 such attacks from July to October last year.

The Taliban has in the past denied that it hosts foreign fighters. But, when asked about this matter by TRT World, Mujahid would neither confirm nor deny the presence of TTP members in Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan. The US State Department declined to comment for this story, and Pakistan’s foreign ministry did not reply to emailed questions.

While much of the focus has been on Al Qaeda’s continuing relationship with the Taliban, less attention has been paid to TTP, a brutal terrorist organisation which wreaked havoc in Pakistan from 2007 to 2014 and seems to be undergoing a resurgence after several years of degraded capability.

TTP is a similar, but distinct, movement from the Afghan Taliban. While the latter emerged in the 1990s, TTP originated in the years following the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan, when pro-Taliban Pakistani tribesmen along with Arab, Chechen, and Central Asian militants fled into Pakistan’s tribal areas and coalesced to form a new umbrella group, TTP, in 2007.

Where loyalties lie

TTP has from its inception supported the insurgency in Afghanistan, fighting alongside the Afghan Taliban and helping to shelter its fighters in Pakistan. TTP’s emirs have repeatedly pledged allegiance to the Afghan Taliban’s leader, although the two groups have separate chains of command.

Moreover, the Haqqani Network – part of the Afghan Taliban – has helped to repair divisions in the fissiparous TTP. “Both Jalal and Siraj Haqqani mediated jirgas to resolve organisational issues and factionalism in the TTP,” said Asfandyar Mir, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University Center for International Security and Cooperation.

However, although the two groups’ aims overlap, they do not match. “The Afghan Taliban, while it has ties to international terror groups, is a local insurgency targeting the Afghan state,” said Michael Kugelman, Senior Associate for South Asia at the Wilson Center.

“The Pakistani Taliban targets the Pakistani state, and when it had more strength, it also had overseas targets in its crosshairs, including America,” Kugelman told TRT World. TTP, unlike the Afghan Taliban, has been designated as a foreign terrorist organisation by the US.

The two also have different sponsors. The Afghan Taliban receives sanctuary from Pakistan, while the TTP has allegedly been backed by the Afghan government. Afghanistan’s foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

Islamabad insists that India backs the TTP, too, and produced a largely secret dossier last year that apparently contains evidence of those links. Delhi has firmly rejected such allegations.

“The two groups are cut from the same ideological cloth,” said Michael Kugelman, both followers of the Deobandi school of Sunni Hanafi Islam. But TTP is “much closer” to the global jihadist agenda of “targeting the far enemy”, Kugelman told TRT World. It has attacked Chinese nationals and tried to bomb Times Square in New York City in 2010.

While both the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban work with Al Qaeda, in TTP’s case the relationship is stronger. “Al Qaeda has played an instrumental role in the foundation, rise, and expansion of TTP,” said Abdul Sayed, an independent researcher on jihadism and the politics and security of the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.

The TTP’s leadership “sought Al Qaeda counselling or approval” in important decisions, Sayed told TRT World, referring to documents seized from the Bin Laden compound. Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), the group’s regional affiliate, has also participated in cross-border attacks with TTP, Sayed said.

Comment by Riaz Haq on August 21, 2021 at 5:09pm

What the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan means for India and Pakistan | The Economist
Inbox

https://www.economist.com/asia/2021/08/21/what-the-taliban-takeover...

Besides losing all its investment in a secular, democratic Afghanistan, India has also lost strategic leverage. There were never Indian troops in Afghanistan, but its aid projects and four consulates certainly spooked the generals running the show in Pakistan. India’s close ties with the Afghan government gave its own security establishment a whiff of “over-the-horizon” influence that felt appropriate to an emerging superpower. When Pakistan-backed Islamists mounted terrorist attacks on India and stirred violence in its restive region of Kashmir, India could threaten to use its Afghan assets to stir trouble in Pakistan’s restive region of Balochistan. Now, with Mr Modi’s Hindu-nationalist government having stirred its own troubles in Kashmir, by stripping the region of autonomy in 2019, it must face the prospect of a new generation of Muslim Kashmiris inspired by the Taliban’s fanaticism.

Perhaps because its spies read the writing on the wall, or perhaps because its teachers and engineers increasingly risked being kidnapped, India had wound down its Afghan presence in recent years. Yet it was only in June that Indian envoys took the first tentative steps to engage with the Taliban. The reckoning with what an abrupt American departure from its backyard means for India has also been slow to settle. The Times of India, the country’s biggest-circulation English daily, voiced one common perception in a sour editorial on August 16th: “At a time when India has strategically hitched its wagon to the us, the Afghan situation should make New Delhi think twice about putting all its eggs in Washington’s basket.”
This is a conclusion that Pakistan, as well as its “all-weather friend” China, will be happy for India to draw. With a stagnant economy and stymied politics, India’s nuclear-armed neighbour has not had much to cheer about of late. So it is that even if urban Pakistanis have little affinity with the Taliban, many are crowing at the Islamists’ success. Imran Khan, Pakistan’s prime minister, went so far as to proclaim that Afghans had “broken the chains of slavery” with the West.
Mr Durrani says that Pakistan itself deserves no credit for the Taliban victory, except for having resisted pressure from America and its allies to crack down on the group. He is too modest. The original Taliban, or “students”, of the 1990s, were students in Pakistani madrassas. Certainly, after America’s invasion in 2001, the Taliban would never have survived their years in the wilderness without the haven provided by Pakistan.
That Pakistan has stood by the Taliban is especially striking, considering that an ideological affiliate based in Afghanistan, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (ttp), has terrorised Pakistan itself, for example by slaughtering more than 145 children and adults at an army-run school in 2014. Questioned about reports that the Taliban have released ttp leaders from the Afghan prisons, the Pakistani interior minister says airily that he hopes for an agreement between the two countries not to allow their soil to be used to attack the other. Luckily for Pakistan’s generals they are rarely held accountable for any violent “blowback” from the isi’s nastier associates. Aside from the occasional diversion of a television interview, Mr Durrani can continue to enjoy his retirement in peace.

Comment by Riaz Haq on August 22, 2021 at 7:39am

#Afghan #Taliban Commission Looking Into #Pakistan’s Concerns: “TTP leaders are being warned to settle their problems with Pakistan and return to the country along with their families in exchange for a possible amnesty by the Pakistani government” #TTP https://www.voanews.com/south-central-asia/afghan-taliban-commissio...


A high-powered commission set up by Afghanistan’s Taliban has been working to press anti-Pakistan militants to stop violence against the neighboring country and return to their homes across the border with their families, VOA has learned from highly-placed sources.

Taliban chief Hibatullah Akhundzada set up the three-member commission recently to look into Islamabad’s complaints that the banned Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), commonly known as the Pakistani Taliban, is using Afghan soil to plot cross-border terrorist attacks, the sources said.

“TTP leaders are being warned (by the Afghan Taliban Commission) to settle their problems with Pakistan and return to the country along with their families in exchange for a possible amnesty by the Pakistani government,” said the sources in Islamabad.

The sources privy to the matter revealed the details on condition of anonymity, citing the “sensitive nature” of the matter and for not being authorized to speak to media.

Pakistan and Afghan Taliban officials have not publicly commented on the development.

On Friday, Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri said Islamabad intends to raise the TTP-related concerns with Kabul.

“We have been taking up the issue of use of Afghan soil by the TTP for terrorist activities in Pakistan with the previous Afghan government and we will continue raising the issue with the future Afghan government as well to ensure that TTP is not provided any space in Afghanistan to operate against Pakistan,” Chaudhri told his weekly news conference.

The sources, while speaking to VOA, ruled out the possibility of Pakistan accepting any TTP demands, insisting the amnesty would be offered in line with the country’s constitution and law of the land, that require the militants to surrender their firearms in order to protect Pakistan’s years of counterterrorism gains.

The United States and the United Nations have also listed the TTP as a global terrorist organization.

The February 2020 deal reached between the Taliban and the United States in Doha, which paved the way for foreign troops to leave Afghanistan, binds the Islamist group to prevent regional as well as transnational terrorist groups from using Afghan soil to threaten global security.

"This concern is legitimate, and our policy is clear that we will not allow anyone to use the soil of Afghanistan against any neighboring country, including Pakistan. So they should not have any concern,” Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen told VOA, without sharing further details.

Shaheen said be it TTP or any other terrorist group they “will have no place in our country and that’s a clear message to all.”

The Taliban are in desperate need of support from regional and international countries now that they are in control of Afghanistan to address governance as well as critical economic challenges facing the country, one of the poorest in the world.

Analysts say it would be extremely difficult for the Taliban to disregard reservations of all the neighboring countries, including Pakistan, on the presence of terrorists which have targets across the Afghan border.

“If they (the Afghan Taliban) fail to deliver on their counterterrorism commitments, not only Pakistan but China, Russia, Iran and Central Asian countries would all be upset because they also complain that fugitive militants sheltering on Afghan soil threaten their national interests,” the Pakistani sources stressed.

“Can they survive if they turn their guns against us and support TTP? This is not possible. Our trade routes are a lifeline for them, for landlocked Afghanistan,” the sources added.

Comment by Riaz Haq on August 22, 2021 at 11:08am

British Defense Chief General Sir Nick Carter: The world should give the Taliban the space to form a new government in Afghanistan and may discover that the insurgents cast as militants by the West for decades have become more reasonable, the head of the British army said on Wednesday.

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/taliban-could-be-different-this-ti...

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General Sir Nick Carter, the Chief of the British Armed Forces, says that General Bajwa is an upright man.

The head of the British Armed Forces, General Sir Nick Carter, told the BBC that General Bajwa wanted to see a peaceful and moderate Afghanistan.

General Sir Nick Carter said that Pakistan had to face various challenges. Pakistan sheltered 3.5 million Afghan refugees on its soil.

The British military chief said Pakistan had set up barricades on the Afghan border and was keeping a close eye on border traffic.

https://92newshd.tv/about/general-bajwa-is-an-upright-and-truthful-...

Comment by Riaz Haq on August 22, 2021 at 11:14am

Afghanistan: Defence Secretary Ben Wallace backs UK armed forces chief General Sir Nick Carter over 'Taliban has changed' remarks

https://news.sky.com/story/afghanistan-defence-secretary-ben-wallac...

The chief of the defence staff had told Sky News that the Taliban wants an 'inclusive' country and is 'a group of country boys that live by a code of honour',

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has backed the UK's armed forces chief over comments he made to Sky News suggesting the Taliban has "changed" since it was last in power 20 years ago.

General Sir Nick Carter also called the insurgents "a group of country boys who live by a code of honour" and said that they wanted an "inclusive" country.

Sir Nick, chief of the defence staff, said on Wednesday that the world should be patient and "hold its nerve" to see what Afghanistan's future holds under a Taliban-led government.

He also told the BBC it "may well be a Taliban that is more reasonable, less repressive and, if you look at the way it is governing Kabul at the moment, there are some indications that it is more reasonable".

His remarks have since been criticised as "absurd" and "unpalatable".

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But Mr Wallace told Kay Burley on Sky News: "He also said that he will see if they change. We are where we are, the Taliban are running the country."

Asked whether he was defending Sir Nick, Mr Wallace said: "Of course I am defending him. Nick Carter knows more than I will ever know about Afghanistan and the Taliban and more than most people. He is a deeply experienced general.

"When he says things, we should listen and we should value it. He is my adviser, he is the prime minister's adviser, and he is absolutely right in some of his observations".

Shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said the general's remarks were a "very difficult and unpalatable message", particularly for women and girls in Afghanistan.

The comments have also come in for heavy criticism elsewhere.

Sky's chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay told Burley: "To say that we've been able to gauge what the Taliban is actually like nowadays is frankly absurd."

Labour MP Dan Jarvis, who also served in the British armed forces in Afghanistan, said: "I'm with Stuart on this one. This is a critical moment and it's very early days...[the Taliban] will be judged not by their words but by their actions."

Also speaking to Burley, political activist Hassina Syed - who managed to get an RAF flight to the UK to escape the country - said: "Actions speak louder than words...this is not the time [to know what will happen] in the future...we have to wait and see."

But former British army officer Simon Conway, whose involvement with the Halo Trust charity has included working with former Taliban fighters, suggested the Taliban may have changed in some ways.

He told Sky News: "It is possible to deal with honourable people. I can't speak for everyone, but there are elements within the new Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan that it's possible to reason with.

"They will be judged by their actions."

Comment by Riaz Haq on August 22, 2021 at 6:54pm

An Indian's view of events in Afghanistan

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/a-strategic-a...


A strategic assessment from India: Kabul’s chaos makes Pakistan look more dangerous
New Atlanticist by Vappala Balachandran


India invested heavily in a peaceful Afghanistan. “No part of Afghanistan today is untouched by the four hundred-plus projects that India has undertaken in all thirty-four of Afghanistan’s provinces,” said Jaishankar.

Over twenty years, India spent more than three billion US dollars on projects—from roads, dams, and electricity-transmission capacity to schools and hospitals—in Afghanistan, the Indian Express reports.

India showed up too. The highway from Zaranj to Delaram was inaugurated by President Hamid Karzai and India’s then External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee in January 2009. (The only “contribution” the Taliban made was by killing six Indian workers and 129 Afghans in terrorist attacks while they worked on the highway project.) Afghanistan’s new parliament building, built by India, was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2015.

These links are part of an Indo-Afghan relationship going back to the third century BCE, when Greeks ceded most of what is now Afghanistan to the Mauryan Empire. Students from Central Asia and Afghanistan studied at the university of ancient Taxila. Philologists say that Pashto, the national language of Afghanistan, is derived from Sanskrit and influenced by Persian. Jawaharlal Nehru, in The Discovery of India, noted that twelfth-century Afghan invaders settled down by marrying Hindu women.

Cultural relations continued after the partition of India in 1947, when Pakistan absorbed the Pashto-speaking northwest areas, though big Pashto-speaking enclaves persist in various Indian states.

There were close bonds between Afghans and Indian Congress party leaders, as highlighted in Canadian filmmaker Teri McLuhan’s 2008 documentary, Frontier Gandhi, and in Non-violent Soldier of Islam, the 1984 book by Eknath Easwaran on the life of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. “Badshah Khan,” as he was fondly called by his followers, was a freedom fighter from undivided India, born in Utamzai, Pakistan, but buried in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. He was close to Mahatma Gandhi, chose Gandhian principles of peaceful struggle, and advocated for women’s rights even in a tribal society.

Ghaffar Khan, who is not as widely remembered as Gandhi, had a different interpretation for jihad: “It is the weapon of the Prophet, but you are not aware of it. That weapon is called patience and righteousness.”

As has been the case for millennia, India’s ambitions in Afghanistan are cultural in nature, not military. The same cannot be said for Pakistan.

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